No place for despots in UN commission.

Date: 30/05/02

Europe must help end the hypocrisy.

By Kenneth Roth

THE recently concluded session of the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) confirmed a disturbing trend: despotic governments are increasingly running the show, with the hope of dampening its voice.

The commission, which meets each March and April in Geneva, is the UN's leading human rights body. But it may also be defined as an 'Abuser's Defence Society', as was painfully apparent at this year's session.

For the past two years, Russia has flouted directives for curbing atrocities in Chechnya so, this year, instead of raising the ante, the UNCHR folded and voted to stop criticising Russia.

Conservative elements in Iran are intensifying repression of reformists, so for the first time in nearly two decades the commission voted to end scrutiny of Tehran, abandoning the reformists.

China has responded to growing popular discontent with heightened oppression, so for only the third time since the murderous crack-down on the Tiananmen Square democracy movement, the commission didn't even propose condemning Beijing, let alone allow the matter to come to a vote.

Behind this abdication was a rogues' gallery of human rights violators, including Algeria, Burundi, China, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Togo and Vietnam.

All had been voted full members of the UNCHR by a selection system that is plagued by perverse incentives.

By putting forward only the same number of candidates as available seats, governments from each region effectively select members from among their ranks.

But the commission is only one of many UN bodies that governments vie to join.

In the developing world, many human rights-respecting governments pursue development-oriented committees, in the hope that they might steer some additional economic assistance their way. But abusive governments tend to place a higher priority on the commission, with the aim of silencing it and avoiding the embarrassment of condemnation. Zimbabwe's election to the body last month, just after narrowly escaping censure, illustrates this dynamic.

If this perverse process is to be reversed, Europe needs to play a leading role. First, Europe should encourage developing-world governments with commendable human rights records to become candidates for membership, perhaps by guaranteeing them the economic assistance they fear losing by forsaking development-oriented UN committees.

Providing technical support to their understaffed Geneva missions would also help.

Second, regional negotiations for membership should be closely scrutinised and, if necessary, condemned.

Europe should not stand by silently as governments select a Zimbabwe - or a Syria, Sudan or Cuba.

For example, it should be pointed out that the much-vaunted 'peer review' of the New Partnership for African Development means little if African governments fail so miserably to select human rights-respecting governments for the commission.

The selection of the next chairman, who according to the usual rotation will come from Africa, is particularly important.

Third, Europe should press for the adoption of minimum criteria for membership, such as barring any government that the commission has recently condemned or that has refused to implement directives or admit investigators.

Finally, Europe should scrutinise its own conduct at the commission, particularly its growing preference for watered-down, consensus statements rather than condemnatory resolutions. These have been pursued in wholly inappropriate circumstances, such as Chechnya and Iran, when the problem is not, for example, enticing a government to consent to technical assistance but pressing it to develop the political will to respect human rights.

The commission is hardly a lost cause. Resolutions this year on Iran, Chechnya, and Zimbabwe lost by only one or two votes, and condemnations of Sudan and Cuba were narrowly approved.

But to break the abusers' tightening grip on the commission, Europe must act quickly. If it waits until next year's commission, the deals for membership will already have been struck.

The time to act is now.

• Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Opinion article on the UN Commission on Human Rights.

http://www.unhcr.org/ http://www.unhcr.org/

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